We award a variety of grants and are exploring a range of program-related investments.

Operating support grants provide nonprofit organizations with unrestricted funds to use as they deem appropriate to become more sustainable over time, including staffing, new technology, or business-practice development, among other purposes.

Project support grants provide restricted funds for specific activities associated with an organization's programming, such as program implementation, applied research, a pilot project, or any other explicitly designated purpose. Project support grants may take the following forms:

• Program implementation grants, our most frequent form of support, fund specific initiatives that advance an organization's mission.
• Growth capital grants support specific efforts associated with expanding, retooling, transitioning or increasing the scale of an organization’s operations so that it may develop a more sustainable operating model.
• Planning grants constitute seed money and are usually used for business planning, market analysis, or other aspects of launching or spinning off a new program or nonprofit organization.
• Facilities-capital grants fund the acquisition and construction of facilities, including land, new construction and existing property renovation and major equipment purchases. Historically these grants were awarded as a challenge to organizations engaged in capital campaigns to raise private funds for facility projects.

Program-related investments are made in support of programmatic goals. PRIs made in the form of loans must be repaid to the foundation. Currently, we make PRIs in two program areas – Health and Environment. PRIs can take many forms, including: 

• Direct loans to organizations, typically at interest rates that are lower than those offered in the commercial market.
• Equity investments, which represent an ownership stake in a for-profit entity.
• Guarantees, which provide credit support to an organization obtaining funding from a bank or agency.
• Linked deposits, which are deposits in FDIC-insured institutions that are working in community lending in a geographic or programmatic area of importance to Kresge.

(Learn more about our Social Investment Practice.)

The Kresge Challenge

For more than eight decades, the challenge grant was our signature funding method. It was an effective way for us to help nonprofit organizations meet their fundraising goals for new facility construction or renovation. Our challenge grant was designed to spur increased charitable giving by donors to our grantees' capital campaigns.

Today, we are using the challenge in a new way. On a selective basis, we may award an operating or project support grant and include a challenge component as an inducement to increase donor contributions for a range of fundraising goals. In consultation with the grantseeker, a program officer may recommend that a grant include a challenge.

Traditional facilities-capital challenge grants continue to be awarded but on a very limited basis. Visit the program of interest to learn more.

As a reference, we have compiled into a booklet the challenge grant resources we developed over the years to assist nonprofit organizations involved in capital campaigns. For more information, see A Guide to the Challenge Grant (a historic document).